Good Morning Everyone! :o)
I have what I hope is an interesting problem to someone reading this. I
have been put in charge of creating a web site for my sons pre-school. In
order to get everything up and running quickly, I installed MediaWiki. It
works great and everyone is creating web pages and editing them. I've very
quickly created bigger site then I ever thought I could do on my own. It's
still not quite what they had in mind, but the content is mostly finished
now.
I've looked at putting all the text over into other CMS programs, but
everything I've tried so far is just horrible to edit and/or administer.
Some don't have what I want, or others like Mambo are just so complex I
would be stuck making every change.
The problem I have is that the Wiki site doesn't provide any hierarchical
navigation. They want the ease of editing the Wiki, but with custom top and
left side navigation menus per page. They also want to take away the edit
menus until users login, and move them to the left side when people do
login. I have seen skins that move it to the left side so I know it can be
done.
I've started looking at the code - version 1.5.6. Right now I think what I
want could be accomplished through templates and CSS. I think something
like {{top_menu}} and {{left_menu}} that creates a div, span, or table...
then move that table around using CSS. Then I think I need to have a custom
skin to put do all the right CSS stuff.
That seems like a lot of work and it also starts mixing "magic" wiki
templates to custom CSS styles that only work with certain skins which just
doesn't feel right. I think it would work, but I'm not sure it's the Best
Way. I've considered adding custom wiki tags too, but that also seems very
involved. I will do that however if it is the Correct Way to do things.
Can any of you brilliant people out there point me to an extension or skin
that will accomplish what I'm trying to do? I am a programmer by trade so
get as technical as you like. I just don't know the MediaWiki thought
structure and design yet. Any and all feedback or suggestions are
appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to read this far, I hope you'll take a minute
more to offer any assistance if you are able. Regardless have a wonderful
day.
Thank you,
- Russ Ryba